SOURCE: Hall, Wayne. “Edward Martyn (1859-1923): Politics and Drama of Ice.” Eire-Ireland 15, no. 2 (1980): 113-22.

In the following essay, Hall examines the ways in which Martyn's political beliefs influenced his presentation of heroic ideals in The Heather Field and Maeve.

In the novel he published in 1890 under the ponderous title of Morgante the Lesser: His Notorious Life and Wonderful Deeds, Edward Martyn described an island-city called Agathopolis, a “majestic iceberg which soars aloft in its cold purity amid the abominable seas of the world … the ideal commonwealth for uncloistered monks of all time.”¹ Martyn himself clung doggedly to an austere spiritual isolation and simplicity much like that of his utopia. In The Heather Field and Maeve, the plays for which he is best known, he created characters of heroic proportion who follow their visions of perfection even into madness or death; and for himself, in nearly all aspects of...